Lethally

Flanagans knowing blue eye took in everything. She just dropped out of the race as if she startedrunning backwards. His eagerness, burning in his eyes, sent pleasant little shiversthrough her. If it washer you were for marrying youd have nothing to worry about.

Hey MLJ

Phallic Long Distance Dedication. A moi de toi, xx.

Mr Florence

I am visiting the US and have acquired a Pandora's Box of sorts. Here in the small southern town where I spent my high school years, there is an old cinema that's been around since the mid-1930s. It is called the Cameo Trio. At one time it was one of three cinemas in town, but as people here became more conservative and inward-looking along with the rest of America, the other two shut down. Today, people who want to see blockbusters usually drive to one of the huge multiplexes in one of the surrounding towns. The Cameo has never had a reputation for cleanliness nor for offering any kind of great, movie-going experience. Nonetheless, I and many others feel affectionate towards the place, in no small part due to Mr. W.P. Florence.

Mr Florence ran the Cameo from at least the late 1930s (I have in my possession documents that verify this) until just before his death a few years ago. He was a well-known "character" around town, always dressed in a scruffy gray suit and large black lather shoes, his hair greased back messily. His parents had money, he himself apparently had oil interests (as correspondence of his from senators Fulbright and McClellan suggests), and he attended the same liberal arts university that I did, before a brief stint in the military. Despite owning two residences in town, in his later years he was apparently living out of a backroom of the Cameo. My dad recalls once leaving some reading glasses behind in the cinema, and being led to this room to retrieve them; it was filled on all walls, ceiling to floor, with old newspapers, with only just enough room for a rickety old cot.

The state of this makeshift living space is indicative of the state of the cinema as a whole. It had amazing tile and mirror bathrooms, complete with a huge powder room for the ladies which connected to the "Crying Room" that was attached to the downstairs auditorium. However, everything was always a complete mess. The joke around town was that if you went to the Cameo you might just stay there, as it was impossible to pry your feet from the sticky floor. The viewing experience was less than ideal as well; movies might sometimes cut out in the middle and only if you were lucky would sound come from all speakers and be present during the whole movie.

Mr Florence was apparently well aware of the state of his theatre. My parents once observed another town "character," a strange and moneyed old lady we knew, tell him off about sticking to the floor as she tried to leave her seat. He promptly sent her a bouquet of flowers, and others concur that this was a common deed with him. He never changed the things people complained about, but he did charm everyone.

A few years ago Mr. Florence sold the Cameo to a family who own one of the large multiplexes in a neighbouring town. At the Christmas parade, they promoted the Cameo and their refurbishments on a float with a huge banner that read, "We cleaned up the Cameo!" Bizarrely, trailing behind them on foot was old Mr. Florence himself, holding up a sign that read, "And they did a good job!"

The day after I arrived here, we attended a huge "tag sale" of the estate of Mr. Florence and his late mother. Their two houses had been completely cleaned out, their contents put up for sale by an antiques auctioneer we know. She told us it took weeks to clean out the houses, and at least 5 days to clean everything up--in line with the Cameo itself, some items were so dust-covered you couldn't tell what they were, and the water they used to clean them with frequently became as dirty and thick as mud. I went along hoping to see some cinema memorabilia, and especially to see if there might even be some old film equipment going. From what I heard, there may have been, but it was thrown out due to the house clearers not knowing what it was. Two 16mm projectors were left when I got there, but someone had bought them, and I heard that a few items of what seemed to be antique cinema projectors were let go for $5 apiece before I arrived because no one knew what they were.

There were still a number of interesting items when I arrived, however. In addition to a $5 box load of correspondence with senators and now defunct film distributors such as RKO, vintage puzzles, and an antique rubber stamp set, I made a rash (given its weight and the fact that I don't live in this country) decision to buy Mr Florence's trunk pictured above. I've always wanted an old travel trunk. This was one of three at the sale, and this one cost next to nothing because, you see, it is locked, and no one seems to have the key. I'm sure it's empty, and I'm not sure I want ever to open it. I like that Mr. Florence's name is on its side, and I like owning a little piece of the ongoing death of cinema.

Chez Maison

4 Hour Layover

RIP Green Boots

There is, of course, a yet-to-be-fleshed-out reason (see the colour tinting in Blithe Spirit, the ectoplasmic logoing of Ghostbusters, photographs of the number of Green (and Gray) Lady ghosts that permeate our fair British Isles, and Michael Taussig's colour project) that I chose a GREEN representation of Mark E Smith below, but in the process of posting that image I was sadly reminded that my favourie green suede boots suddenly ripped irreparably the other week.

Wonderful and Frightening

I think few people realise that the title of this blog is inspired by The Fall, perhaps my favourite band of all time (the other half of my blog title--the title in the address--is inspired by one of my favourite texts on surrealism, by Hal Foster; I myself am neither a beauty nor compulsive). Listening to Mark E Smith ranting about computers this evening, I remembered I'd bookmarked this piece of writing that hints at the hauntological possibilities of the Fall; right up my alley, obviously. It happens to be written by one of the contributors to the recent Cultural Fictions conference I attended at Goldsmiths.

At the conference, and while I'm thinking about it (and I really should take notes when I think of these things), I especially enjoyed Mark Broughton's talk on dyschronia in relation to the excellent vintage sci-fi/ghost-fi, made-for-TV flick, The Stone Tape. However, I contend that ghosts are ALWAYS dyscrhonic, not just on the occasions when they're inaccessible through technology and "buried in time," as in The Stone Tape. It's not that technology is used to combat the mysticism surrounding ghosts; in my research on electronic voice phenomena (EVP) and the use of other digital methods of "scientific" ghost hunting, it's the technology that reinforces and redefines the uncanny nature of ghosts--and isn't dyschronia just one more example of the uncanny (being lost in, or TO, time goes beyond other forms of disorientation)? Ghosts are always dyschronic experiences, and even more so when they are stored as endlessly repetitive visual and sonic phenomena in out-of-time-and-space digital archives. Ghosts are irreversibly out of time--through technology they both symbolically and discursively keep repeating (and I don't buy exorcism film-myths and hate how Catholicism has ruined many an otherwise good horror film, but that's a topic for another post). This potential (or inevitable) link of ghosts and technology reinforces Mark B's suggestion (and my own hunch) that ghosts are the ultimate sci-fi figures; they are the ultimate uncanny, as my interminable thesis suggests.

Lost and Found Cat

Look what spent the night last night!
Our neighbours found this strange little kitty wandering around in panic mode in the middle of the street, and came to us "cat people" for advice. We took it in for the evening (well, into the hallway, along with some food and water and a litter tray and bed) and this morning located its grateful owners who gave me a bottle of wine as thanks.

His name is JJ.

It's officially tourist season in Brighton, and I can't even work out on the balcony because the square below has been taken over by European teenagers from various language schools who insist on taking pictures of me on their mobile phones. They are like a plague. The beach (above) has been overrun with the same, so I'll stay indoors and wait for everyone to leave in August.

Summer has returned, after a couple of cloudy sea-breezy days. I took my work and my bikinied self out onto the balcony this afternoon. At one point, a lovely tan women in a summery dress arrived in the square carrying a picnic blanket, some paper cups, and a tasty-looking cake on a crystal cake stand. How nice, I thought, she's setting up for a little afternoon garden party with friends. Maybe it's someone's birthday, and they'll be surprised by the cake. I watched as the woman spread out the blanket, and then herself, in the dappled shade and lush grass underneath a tree, and wondered when her friends would arrive. Then I realised what she was doing. A huge camera and little tripod had emerged from her bag. And so ensued 15 minutes of angling herself and the cake and cups around on the blanket, and lots of snapping and adjusting of lenses. And then as quick as she came she went: cake, cups, blanket and camera were briskly packed away and she strode past the usual group of drinkers, the older lady who feeds the pigeons and that guy who's always practicing juggling, back to some hot and stuffy office or maybe to her work-from-home studio and a computer full of emails from her advertising clients, one of whom is obviously a seller of cakes, or cake stands, or paper cups, or picnic blankets.

Singapore Fling

Ryan Chin (whoever you are), look what you've caused.

Wankers

I had an erotic dream about Pete from Big Brother the other night. He was working or living at this salon that was doing some kind of charity breakfast that I was of course sceptical of. His messy bedroom had a couple of concrete steps that led up to it and he was such a good kisser. I watch too much telly lately.

"Kenneth, What Is the Frequency?"

I'd forgotten the Donald Barthelme connections to the bizarre incident that happened to newsreader Dan Rather 1980s, when he was attacked by two mysterious men in white coats yelling, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" You can read about it in this Harpers article.


This unsolved mystery of those men and their origin, identity and destination, and especially that line the repeated over and over, really thrilled and disturbed me. In the same way, I suppose, that "the rhythm" became a concept of mystery and dread for my little brother, owing to the fact that I told him that the Gloria Estefan song "The Rhythm is Gonna Get You" referred to some deadly nighttime presence that haunted little brothers who annoyed their sisters.

Frequency--electricity!--worries and fascinates me in a different way now, and shows up in my thesis alot, which reminds me that I really should post some of it here sometime to ensure even less people stop by this blog regularly.

Donald Barthelme and Ghetto Reference Librarians

I'm a big fan of the late writer Donald Barthelme, some of whose (very) short stories you can access online thanks to the good work of a radical librarian called Jessamyn.

Speaking, however, of librarians, I clicked on a random blog link today of a woman who works in the reference section of a "ghetto library" in the Bay Area. Maybe I'm out of touch with public libraries, but do workers in the reference section provide a service whereby patrons can ask them random questions about soil, alcoholism, vacation destinations, and even the meanings of dreams and expect to get actual answers (rather than just instructions on how to obtain the answer using the library's resources)? No wonder the blog-writer seems like such a bitch. Her blog describes being trapped in a cubicle smothered by co-workers she hates as drunks and weirdos approach her with impossibly weird and random questions that she must provide answers to, while worrying about other issues such as the lethargy of housekeeping services when it comes to cleaning up after patrons' incontinent guide dogs.

I particularly like her entry about a woman who regularly calls up asking the reference librarians to interpret her dreams for her--which they obediently do, using a whole little section of dream interpretation books they've set up just for her. My whole point being that the blog entry has a Barthelme-esque tone to it, while the scenario itself is reminiscent of Bunuel's absurd film scenarios, or maybe Hans Richter's Dreams That Money Can Buy. I'm just saying I think there could be a surrealist film in there somewhere.

Jerry Eleison

Went to see Jerry Springer the Opera the other night cause it's not selling well at the Dome so M had some free tix. I was excited to see some protesters outside holding placards urging us not to support the show (and according to this this, some of them may have even been fasting in anticipation! Wow, and all I did was change out of my flip flops into some sensible shoes in case the theatre was cold.). When we went in, the protesters handed us some brochures spelling out their quibbles, which were fair enough given these folks have probably not been burdened by so much of the annoying high theatre/performance art that I have, and are therefore unable to interpret the show as the slightly unsuccesful postmodern dig at opaquely grandiose and absurdist opera themes that I think it's, in part, meant to be. Which was what was kind of disappointing about it. When I was in high school, back when the Springer show was a late night treat focusing less on freaks and more on the freakish situations arising out of inequalities in class, race and gender exacerbated by a mass-media saturated US (and of course, by the show itself) I loved watching it as I love playing GTA: San Andreas now. It's a sort of self-critical anthropology served up on a plate. But there's no critique of media in Jerry Springer the Opera, no political messages. In that respect, it's simply pretty tame, West End humour. I liked the chorus line of many Jerrys at the end, though. Tap dancing chorus lines are great, so I don't know where these crazy Christians get off saying there's nothing uplifting here.

Oh, and the photo is not of a Jerry Springer the Opera protester, but rather of a man who was demonstrating with his family outside of a SuperWalMart in Arkansas. My dad had a new camera and decided to make them his first subjects and stopped and chatted. Nice folks, he said. I love how each state on his sign has a different sin attached to it. I think it's funny that Kansas's sin is "Effeminate." Hmmm.

World Cup Fever Breaking

M and I have exhausted our collective barracking possibities for this World Cup, save our adpoted home of England. Ok, so the US exhausted its own possibilities for victory while Australia was heartbreakingly robbed. So gooooooo England.

Really, I'm trying to muster enthusiasm, but I've still got an image of the mass of little urinating willies of the red-shirted drunks who spilled out of the pubs and into the sqaure below our house after the England game a couple of weeks ago. Their fervent bleating of "World in Motion" (my fave World Cup song, actually) meant more urine landed on their trousers than on the shrubs, and also that the New Order kick I'd been on was effectively ended. But yeah, I'll be in front of the telly come 1600 tomorrow.

Some things may stick with me forever. Not just the obviously memorable tragic-farcical things that hit us in the face last week (of which there were many, but the empty horse-drawn hearse and funeral procession that blocked our path outside the station for the London hospital being the most obvious, save the image on the screen we would see an hour or so later). It’s other things, irrelevant little scenes, colours, overheard bits of conversations, phrases printed on wall signs, that seem to have imprinted permanently on my mind. On the way out of the hospital: in the elevator, a man whose accent sounded Trinidadian and his two little boys, one sobbing into his dad’s shoulder. “He’s afraid of elevators,” the man smilingly explained to us. Somehow we managed to laugh and smile back. “It’s ok, we reach, we reach,” said the man to the little boy when the doors opened onto the main lobby. A few minutes later in the park next door: no idea what I said into the phone to my parents, but what sticks in my mind are the purple pansies and the pink and orange lilies and the little rose bushes, and the daytime drinkers’ cans of cider and lager glinting metallic blue and gold in the afternoon sun, and the brown squirrel that ran in slow motion towards me, stopping at my feet to beg for food. Then later, specific tastes: champagne in a waterbottle; a mojito without mint. The image from that Clive Barker book that made us laugh at our realisation of its perverse inappropriateness as a comforting mechanism for dealing with this. The next day back in Brighton: my bare tan legs and mauve toenails on the white hospital bedspread. Healthy-looking. Absinth-green odourless nail polish remover and one cotton ball to take away the mauve from my fingertips that would apparently interfere with the monitoring equipment if left in place. The “quick” crossword we started while we waited: eight-letter word for Freud’s term for the conscious mind; four-letter word for senile, 3rd letter is “R;” nine-letter word for “compelling,” also beginning with “C.” Did it call for a synonym or for some well-known example of something compelling, we wondered. Ken Loach’s Cannes winner: a recommendation from one of the anaesthesists upstairs who knows anthropologists study people and can be political and thinks it’s cool. His assistant is left-handed like me; we’re becoming more common in the OR apparently (too late to ask if as patients or workers). A green plastic thing being taken from my mouth as I woke from an instantly forgotten nightmare set in dark Kemptown alleyways. Downstairs again, and with the grogginess came clarity: the answer was of course “superego.” I always think better under the influence of something. We let the rest go; left the newspaper behind on the floor.

A Beginning and an Ending

I have a habit of taking self-portraits at or near the begnnings and endings of things.








These are both happy photos, regardless of what's come in-between.


I hope you can tell.

More Peel for Your Pleasure

That Radio 1 Peel site I linked below has links to other great Peel sites, including one containing the John Peel Sweet Eating Game and a page of priceless quotes from the man himself, containing the following gem:

"Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don't have any surface noise. I said, 'Listen, mate, *life* has surface noise.'"

I miss John Peel John Peel a great deal, once or twice a week of late. Guess I could use some distracting. Late Junction is ok, especially for drifting between sleep and whatever I'm reading, but those regular re-appearances of Tom Waits and new age-y soundtrack stuff from Peter Gabriel: it's hardly stuff you haven't heard before, or want to be hearing more than once.

A breezy warmish day here in Brighton, and outside yellow-pink blossoms and red and white England football flags are blowing about in the breeze, and flies are breezing in and out of the house, with Piper whirling around after them.

It's been just over 9 months since the hurricane hit the Gulf coast of the US, obliterating a lot of people and things and places from my childhood memories and my adulthood fantasies about the future, and now it's hurricane season again. Nine months is both a long and short time to live with something that's mostly in my in mind as memory and fantasy but, through my own persistent planning and "research" since then, feels as heartbreakingly real as if it were a living breathing dying daily presence.

"Is it right to break the heart of one that adores you?"

So read D.B.C. Pierre at his talk on Friday evening, from a piece of fan mail from a besotted Bengali man. Or something like that.

Er, and then there's this.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/socialcare/news/0,,1781360,00.html

Oh Shahbaz.

I like BB this year.

That footballer's wife wannabe girl is a real cutie and speaks like a cross between my friend Jemma and Michael "Phantom of the Opera" Crawford in Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em.

And what's not to like about well-endowed Tourette's sufferers such as Brighton's own Pete?

And last night after the whole house spurned the annoying Shahzan (the "Pakie Pouf"), he snuck into the kitchen while everyone slept and stole all the food, muttering typical villain threats for the cameras: "I'll make them fucking talk to me. Let's see how they think now. Oh, the satisfaction!" Straight panto.

Speaking of Huevos

Rancheros deluxe.